


Brimstone Between My Teeth (Come Back to Me)

by Her_Madjesty



Category: Satan and Me (Webcomic)
Genre: Angst, Can you really be in denial when you're sacrificing your wings for a girl?, F/M, Loss, Pain, Sacrifice, Self-Denial, This Is A Super Cheerful Fic, We ask the real questions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-11
Updated: 2017-03-11
Packaged: 2018-10-02 15:45:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,139
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10221749
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Her_Madjesty/pseuds/Her_Madjesty
Summary: “Don’t look at her,” he growls, deep in his throat and bloody. “Heal her.”Or: Lucifer mourns.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Did I read the whole of SaM in one night? Yes. Is the current chapter a brilliant work of angst and sacrifice? Yes. Am I impatiently/eagerly waiting for an update that may (understandably) not come for a while?
> 
> You bet your ass I am.
> 
> XOXO

Pestilence's skin bubbles.

She doesn’t like to talk about it, and Lucifer doesn’t point it out. Still, he watches what lies beneath try to push its way through her skin. Fixates on it, really. He’s seen it before, on her, on others – red, rosy bubbles that can grow to the size of apples if left untreated. Not that there’s really a treatment; one third of Europe found that out the hard way, save for those who burned their dead or remembered to bath now and again.

He shuffles his feet and feels Natalie – _no_ , not Natalie, just Natalie’s _corpse –_ shift in his arms. There’s snot dried under her nose, but her fever died with her. There aren’t any splotches on the skin that he can see, but that’s not to say that they wouldn’t have appeared later on.

If she had lived that long.

Lucifer focuses on the black of a bubble that threatens to break through Pestilence’s skin. The disappointment that rises in his chest when it doesn’t burst almost – almost – makes him want to smile.

“Are you sure about this?” she asks him. She’s a broken record too giddy to sound sympathetic; it kills any semblance of amusement left in him. His grip tightens on Natalie (no, _not_ Natalie). He opens his mouth, tries to speak. Fails. There’s an animal noise building in the back of his throat, something morbid and frankly embarrassing.

Death is watching, unblinking, so Lucifer swallows and tries again.

“If this is the only way,” he says, sharp-tongued through gritted teeth, “then just do it.”

His gaze drops from Pestilence and onto the asphalt.

Death is the one who kneels to take Natalie from his arms. Lucifer nearly snaps at him, canines sharp and skin twisting, but Death is nothing if not patient. His skeletal form doesn’t touch Natalie’s cooling skin, but a chill runs down Lucifer’s spine as he takes her away, carefully propping her head up against his unreal shoulder.

He doesn’t look sympathetic, but then again, he never does. He has no reason to.

When he sets her down, Natalie seems to shrink. Pestilence doesn’t touch her, doesn’t dare; she steps forward, instead, to circle Lucifer with an auctioneer's eye.

“You heard him, brother,” she says, though Death is not her brother and he grumbles at being called so. He walks forward, pulls his scythe from a pocket dimension Lucifer dares not touch. It glints, the only shiny thing in this motel’s parking lot, including all of the cars lined up and ready to bear witness.

When they are both out of sight, Lucifer looks up again. He kneels and fixes his gaze on Natalie’s red swath of hair. His hands clench into fists on his thighs.

There was a moment –

Well, there were several moments. Salt water, sharp in his nose and stinging in the way that salt always does, like a half-healed wound still bites at the touch. Her shoulder under his hand, too small and too frail, though if he tries hard enough, pushes hard enough, he can feel the moving edges of her soul starting to push back.

There’s Michael, blue-eyed and terrible, laughing at Lucifer’s birthday present in the quiet moments when he thinks no one can see. There is Festus, pouting; there is Raphael, shaking; there is Ipos, teeth snapping in un-righteous fury that neither of them will apologize for later.

It still hurts to wing himself. The air around him sizzles, fluttering with anticipation. Lucifer hears Pestilence gasp, ignores it, refocuses on the way Natalie’s hair blows gently in the wind Heaven creates for her.

There’s blood seeping out of his palms. It’s lucky their contract is broken; the skin on her arm, cut in with Jericho’s message (you’re late, you’re late, _you’re late_ ) is still visible, if only just and in the right light.

He doesn’t want to cause her any more pain.

The air is too heavy.

“Come on,” he bites, resisting the urge to look backwards. “Aren’t you going to do it already?”

When Death’s scythe tears through his left wings, it is pitiless.

On a beach, deep in his memory, Natalie looks up at him with eyes too green and a smile tinging on obnoxious. Lucifer counts her teeth in his head and swallows a scream.

The right wings flutter down next, smacking against the asphalt. Leftover rain puddles sputter. Lucifer gasps, the air knocked out of him; he careens forward, but he keeps his gaze locked on Natalie’s form. The world around him has gone still, dead in its quiet save for his desperate panting.

He’s not sure which of the Horsemen gather up his wings. Pestilence isn’t touching them, however, when she walks ‘round to look him in the face again.

She tilts her head, considering. The glance she sends towards Natalie’s frail body is narrower, in its way, but not unkind. All the same, Lucifer finds himself stumbling to his feet. “Don’t look at her,” he growls, deep in his throat and bloody. “Heal her.”

“It’s a bit difficult to do one without the other, sweetie,” Pestilence informs him. She steps out of range when he pursues her, taking refuge at Natalie’s side. It’s a nearly laughable gesture; the girl would likely defend her murderer, were she still alive.

His body is too light.

“Just do it,” Lucifier orders, spitting. His next step is unsteady, what with the weight missing from his back. Bile threatens to burst its way out of his throat, but he swallows it back and relishes the burn.

Pestilence watches him for an eternity longer. Then, with unusual gentleness, she places her hands on Natalie’s body.

Natalie convulses. Lucifer cries out, but he falls before he can come to her side. Pestilence pulls back, disgust and satisfaction warring for a place on her face.

“There,” she says, rising. Asphalt and dirt smoke, bubble as they fall from her knees. “That’s my part. Brother dear?”

Death swears something old and agitated, but he moves forward, anyway. Lucifer scrambles forward to brace Natalie’s side as Death squats to join her. He watches as the Horseman closes his eyes, concentrating.

(The thing about resurrection is this: Lucifer knows Hell. He carries it with him, heavier than his wings, deep in the acid pits of his stomach. Lucidity in the moments it threatens [ _threatened_ ] to break free is a difficult thing, but he knows those voices, knows those impulses, knows the cold claws and sharp teeth of an enemy that surrounds you on all sides.)

(Death kneels at Natalie’s side, hauls her back into the land of the living, and Lucifer waits. He watches for her eyes to open again, hoping – _willing_ her eyes to be that same tender green that sparks in the night and not a fractured mirror of the girl he’s come to –)

**Author's Note:**

> Let me know what you thought!


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